TitleNews Online Archive

TitleNews Online Archive

Mortgage Purchase Applications Steady in Latest Survey

March 1, 2006

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) today released its Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending February 24. The Market Composite Index — a measure of mortgage loan application volume was 571.5 – a decrease of 1.2 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from 578.5 one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the Index decreased 9.6 percent compared with the previous week and was down 18.9 percent compared with the same week one year earlier. There was an adjustment included in the seasonally adjusted indexes to account for the President’s Day holiday.

The seasonally-adjusted Purchase Index decreased by 1.9 percent to 400.8 from 408.7 the previous week, whereas the Refinance Index increased by 0.1 percent to 1573.5 from 1571.4 one week earlier. Other seasonally adjusted index activity includes the Conventional Index, which decreased 1.4 percent to 843.6 from 855.8 the previous week, and the Government Index, which increased 1.5 percent to 117.9 from 116.2 the previous week.

The four week moving average for the seasonally-adjusted Market Index is down 2.3 percent to 585.9 from 599.7. The four week moving average is down 2.1 percent to 406.6 from 415.3 for the Purchase Index while this average is down 2.6 percent to 1633.2 from 1676.6 for the Refinance Index.

The refinance share of mortgage activity decreased to 38.1 percent of total applications from 38.2 percent the previous week. The adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) share of activity decreased to 28.3 percent of total applications from 29.1 percent the previous week.